On the Tip of Your Mother's Tongue

by J.P. Infante

JP Infante's debut prose poetry chapbook won the 4th Annual Wavelengths Chapbook Contest in 2020.
Now, it’s being republished with gusto.
On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue is a dual language (English-Spanish) collection of prose and poetry. Expanded & revised, it is a story of a son grappling with his mother's mental health and his stepfather’s overdose in Washington Heights, New York City. Capturing the disastrous toll of the criminalization of drug use on communities, families, and individuals, Infante pairs literature with buying cocaine, screen time with addiction, and cinema with harm reduction. It’s modern literature for New Yorkers & U.S. Americans. Critical, gritty, & emboldening, JP Infante is a masterful scholar of contemporary inner-city life.

180 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2025

Reviews

[PJ Guippone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly wish the “almost all about your mother” section was the entire book. It is extremely inventive and thoughtful. Throughout the final story (essay?) I was longing for the tone and the show-don’t-tell-ness of the childhood story. Still, there are parts that harness a similar childlike, shrug-hm-okay tone of “almost all about your mother.” Most notably: “the protagonist doesn’t reply to his mother’s text, and he’s been haunted ever. So he writes about horror movies instead of the text he didn’t send.” This is when the author is at his best.

[ashraow]

Un viaje corto pero intenso, como una montaña rusa pero a 100km por segundo en un mar de tiburones. "En las Pantallas" es el punto más alto de toda la historia, fue aquí que me quedé atrapado y tuve que terminarlo. Creo que es también la voz más interesante de todo el texto, y un estilo que quisiera leer más.

Me gusta ver historias de esta diáspora triste, compleja, dificil. Como dicen lo gringo, "theres nuance".